Alabama 811 | Know What's Below.

Rain Moving Out

| March 29, 2014 @ 6:46 am

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It’s been quite a soaking rain event with many streams and rivers running full thanks to between 2 and 3 inches of rainfall over the last 36 hours or so. But fortunately for the 8,513 fans who went to Regions Field last night to see the Barons take on the Chicago White Sox, the weather played nice as round 2 of the rain held off until after midnight. Unfortunately, the White Sox prevailed in the game. Still nice to have a major league team in town.

Some additional good fortune for us came in the form of limited thunderstorms. Yesterday I had some concerns for potentially strong to severe storms, but the lack of strong instability as well as a lack of deep low level moisture helped to keep the strength of the updrafts down. Even with these limitations, those storms overnight were rather “hot” with a tremendous amount of cloud to ground lightning showing up. This never sits well with my dog, so we spent the better part of the night in the basement room which is nearly soundproof and certainly calms Cheyenne’s anxiety along with her thunder coat!

The weather will be improving for us as a surface low glides across North Alabama this morning headed northeast toward the Mid-Atlantic states by tomorrow morning. While the bulk of the rain has moved east of Central Alabama, a sizable area of rain continued over the northwest quadrant of the state, and that will be exiting the area by late morning. This should pave the way for some peeks at the sun for the afternoon hours as clouds break up a bit. Temperatures will not climb much today with highs expected to rise into the middle and upper 60s.

Some additional good news came in the form of rainfall amounts in round 2. Fortunately, after many locations saw between 2 and 3 inches of rain in round 1 that ended by noon Saturday, round 2 did not produce quite as much rain across North and Central Alabama as I thought it might. So we dodged any serious flash flooding issues. Many rivers and major streams are running pretty full due to the rain, and some portions of the Black Warrior and Sucarnoochee rivers are under flood warnings for what is described primarily as minor flooding problems.

Sunday looks to be a beautiful day with lots of sunshine and temperatures climbing into the upper 60s. Thanks to a building upper level ridge acting as a shield for us, the weather is forecast to be good through the middle of the week. In fact, by Wednesday we could be pushing the 80-degree mark for highs with temperatures forecast to reach the upper 70s.

The next disturbance in the upper flow will come out of the southern Rockies late Thursday and early Friday. This will move a surface low across the Central US with a cold front dragging down into the Lower Mississippi River Valley on Friday. I think we stay dry on Thursday with the better chances for rain coming Thursday night and into Friday. Because of the strong ridge over the Southeast US coast, the front will stall out across the Southeast US without any major eastward or southward push. This is likely to keep us unsettled with showers possible for next weekend until another developing trough over the southern Rockies finally come eastward on Monday. While the GFS and the European are not exact copies of one another, they present with similar patterns and reasonably close timing on this system.

While it is into voodoo country, that Monday system looks fairly strong, so it could be responsible for a round of severe weather. The pattern keeps a chilly look to it through the 9th or 10th, and then another potent short wave moves across the Middle Mississippi River Valley on the 13th promising another episode of active weather. The overall pattern certainly looks reasonable especially when looking at the calendar and remembering that we are moving into the peak month of severe weather.

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I expect to have the next edition of the Weather Xtreme Video posted here by 8 am or so on Sunday. You can always find the latest information on Central Alabama weather right here, so be sure to bookmark us and check back often. Have a great day and Godspeed.

-Brian-

Category: Alabama's Weather

About the Author ()

Brian Peters is one of the television meteorologists at ABC3340 in Birmingham and a retired NWS Warning Coordination Meteorologist. He handles the weekend Weather Xtreme Videos and forecast discussion and is the Webmaster for the popular WeatherBrains podcast.

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